by Jack Conner
“Don’t shoot Eliza!” the Commander shouted.
Panting, world spinning, Lynch glanced over his shoulder to see that he was backing toward the black iron bars that blocked off one of the tunnels. The half dozen troopers that guarded its gate fanned out, their guns on Lynch’s back.
Lynch pressed the pistol into the side of Eliza’s head.
“Open that gate or I blow out her brains!”
“Lynchmort!” she scolded.
He shook her. “I’ll do it!”
Somewhere Gunnerson laughed. “Open it! This should be amusing.”
“We will have to get a new specimen,” the Commander was saying. “Oh, well, there are plenty of those in Brookshire . . .”
“Don’t do this,” Eliza pleaded. “You’ll die. Let me help you. Let me take you to Dr. Jung. He’s -- ”
He shook her more violently. “Shut up!”
He turned and shot off the lock that hung from the gate. The troopers fanned out, not opening the gate but not stopping him either. Angry, he tore it open and looked down the passageway, seeing only darkness. The passageway rounded a bend, black and sinister.
The world tilted, and he shook his head. Damn Fieglund!
He dragged Eliza through the gateway and into the tunnel. It was colder here, and moist. Bats chittered somewhere behind him. The reek of guano permeated everything.
“Do you mean to take me with you?” Eliza asked.
Her back was pressed up against his front, and her buttocks pushed up just beneath his loins. His left arm held her below her breasts. His upper forearm just barely brushed them. She smelled of fine French perfume -- older perfume, true French perfume, not the Vichy stuff of the day. She felt very good against him.
“I should,” he said. “I could give you the good hiding you deserve. Just what are you doing here, Eliza?”
“You wouldn’t understand. Don’t do this, Lynchmort. Don’t go down this way. You’ll die.”
“Why?”
“There are . . . things . . . living down here . . .”
“I have three guns.”
They had reached the bend and were disappearing around it. Troopers had gathered close to the bars, rifles aimed, but they showed no inclination to follow Lynch past the gate. Indeed, Lynch saw one soldier dispatched toward a side-room, possibly to find a replacement lock. Did they fear what lived down this tunnel?
“It will be romantic,” Lynch told her, voice slurring. “Just you and me, alone in the dark, against . . . the monsters . . .”
Eliza elbowed him in the ribs and slipped away. Lynch ducked down the bend in the tunnel as gunfire split the air behind him. He heard the clang of metal -- Eliza had reached the gate -- then shouted orders from beyond. He didn’t pause to listen but ran. The lights grew fainter and fainter behind him and he wished he’d had the foresight to nick a torch.
Darkness crept up on him, then devoured him utterly.
He ran on, panting, heart thumping, frequently caroming off an only guessed-at wall. He strained his ears for sounds of pursuit but could hear nothing over the pounding of his heart. His weariness began to fade, the toxins purged from his system by the influx of adrenaline.
Panting, he stopped for a breather. He hunkered over, grabbing a knee for support. Sweat ran down his face, stung the cut on his cheek. In the distance behind him, he thought he heard the shuffle of footsteps.
Still breathing heavily, he straightened, took out his stolen cigarette lighter, and flicked it on. Light flared. Three passageways spread out before him.
Out of each passageway stalked misshapen figures, their eyes glowing by the light of the flame.
Even as Lynch flicked off the light and reached for his gun, they lunged for him.
PART TWO
THE CITY BELOW
Chapter 8
Eliza remembered a time when she had been a young girl of twelve. Her father had forbid her from sneaking out with “that James boy”, who was a “Jew-tainted devil boy who will come to a bad end”, so it was no surprise that he flew into a fury when servants found the two youngsters sneaking out into the forest one night. His rage had been immense, and he had taken young Eliza into his study, had her pull up her dress and thrashed her violently with his riding crop so severely that her bottom had smarted for weeks.
Lynch had come to visit her that night. She had been locked in her room, which was actually in a sort of tower of the de Courtney’s palatial mansion, and he had been forced to climb the side of it. Doubtless he was aware of the romance of this. He had knocked on her window until, crying, she had opened it, letting in a burst of cold air, and young Lynchmort James.
“What are you doing here, Lynchmort James?” she’d said, tears running down her face. “I never want to see you again!”
If he had felt pain at this, he hadn’t shown it. Instead he cracked a mischievous grin and said, “Yeah, but I bet you’ll want to see this!” He pulled out an object stuck through his waistband and deposited her father’s riding crop at her feet.
She had cried out in shock, then swept down to grab it. As if it were something holy, she had held it up and admired it. The moonlight stroked the expensive leather, the intricate work. Her father loved riding, and he only possessed the finest horses -- and the finest accessories. This riding crop had been specially made for him in Spain.
Lynch’s eyes had lit up to see her study it, and all her anger and pain had melted away. She threw her arms around him and wept.
The next day, when her father had discovered the riding crop missing, he had flown into another rage. He had searched all the servants’ rooms. Not finding it, his face had grown black and his eyes had bulged; they glared at Eliza suspiciously, murderously, but she had been locked in her room the whole time and could not possibly have stolen it. He went on high alert after that, and she and Lynch had had to sneak out together even more cautiously, but somehow it made their escapades even more exciting. All the while she kept the riding crop under her mattress. Every night she would take it out and admire it, and she would dream of the boy who had risked so much -- the beating of his life, first by her father and then his, and that would surely only be the beginning of it -- to steal it for her.
Her father had replaced the riding crop, but it was over half a year later before he got the chance to use it on her, and for the same reason. This time he had beaten her worse than ever, shouting, “I will not have my daughter corrupted by that trash! His family is a disgrace. Everyone knows his grandfather ruined their bloodline by marrying that Jew whore! So what if his mother’s mother knows the Queen? His father’s mother will be the ruin of them all -- and I will not have their taint spread to my daughter! If you spread your legs for that trash I’ll kill you! You think I want your womb spitting out Jew whelps from a boy whose only future is the rubbish bin? I’ll flay you alive if I catch you with him again!”
He had nearly flayed her alive that time, and her young bottom had been bloody and raw. She had gone to bed sobbing again that night, and as before there had come a knock at the window. As before, she had opened it and admitted young Lynchmort James. Not only did he have her father’s riding crop this time but he had a bottle of her father’s finest whiskey. “It’ll help the pain,” he said. She had turned thirteen two months previous, and he was fourteen. That night, drunk and giddy, they had kissed on the lips for the first time. He had left, red and flustered, and she had been afraid he would break his neck on the way down.
Again her father flew into a rage the next morning, and again he found no outlet for it. Now young Elizabeth de Courtney had two riding crops under her mattress, and her love for Lynchmort James was an almost painful thing in her chest.
***
Now, as she watched him vanish into the darkness of the tunnel, she recalled his words, that he would give her the hiding she deserved, and she knew he would not say such a thing unless he truly, truly meant it. Something in her chest, that same thing that had pained her for years, twisted violently, and her throat constri
cted tightly.
***
Breathless, her mind spinning, she rejoined the others in the laboratory room known as Sector One. Commander Higgins was shaking his head and cursing; he had an impressive range of curse words and delighted in showcasing them. “There goes a great resource to us, damn his shitting hide! If only he had been more tractable! Now we will have to find a new patient, won’t we, and I doubt he will possess half the spirit of that one!”
Lars Gunnerson seethed from behind his red-tinted shades. “I’m glad. The man burned down my house. He killed my sister.” He paused for a moment, got himself under control. “I only wanted him as a lab rat to see the pain it would inflict on him. If the serum had worked . . . I could not have tolerated him as our ally . . . ”
Commander Higgins scoffed. “He need not have been our ally, Lars. Once we had observed the initial effects, we would only have kept him with the others for further monitoring.”
Eliza collected herself. “You just said he could have been a resource. I assumed you meant you would have used him as a soldier, if it had worked.”
The Commander regarded her, his expression unreadable. “In truth, I would have left it up to Lars’s discretion. He did lose his sister to that man.”
“From the report I heard, it was Seigel’s poison that killed her.”
Gunnerson almost sneered. “It was that man.” He clenched a trembling fist. “And I will see him pay for it. Lydia did not deserve death like that.”
Eliza, who had always suspected Lars and Lydia were a little too close, tactfully said nothing. Defending Lynch at this juncture would be a tactical error. “Well, I suppose the issue is finished one way or the other. He cannot survive what is in those tunnels.”
Lars smiled coldly. “A pity.”
“Still, I should arrange for an expedition to be sure. I will meet with Doctor Jung and see to it that James’s body is recovered.” Jung would help her, she knew. He was her only confidant, her only ally. Together they could find Lynch before the creatures in the tunnels could.
Gunshots filtered in from the passageways behind her, muted and muffled by distance but unmistakable.
Lars’s expression turned ravenous. “I hope they rip him limb from limb. Slowly. My only regret is that I cannot watch.”
More gunshots followed, and Eliza’s chest tightened. Lynch had three guns, he had said. It was possible, just possible . . .
Commander Higgins waved the issue away. “We will go down together, or at least Lars and I and our team will, on the way to the Site. En route we shall discover if there is anything left of our crusader or not. I suspect not. Judging from those gunshots, they found him even sooner than I had imagined. They must have followed our most recent expeditionaries back up here.”
Lars raised his eyebrows and exchanged a glance with Fieglund. Turning back to Commander Higgins, he said, “You mean . . . ? Well, is there news?”
Eliza felt the excitement, too, if not for the same reason. Finally, things were moving!
Higgins nodded, unable to hide his eagerness. “Yes, the ruins have been more fully excavated. It’s why I summoned you both. Not only have more ruins been excavated, but I think . . . from the reports . . . it might be the key.” Rapture filled his face, and his bulging green eyes only seemed to bulge further. Sweat beaded his forehead. He looked like a zealot seeing some sign of his god -- which was not too far from the truth.
“We must move at once,” Lars said. “This is what we’ve all been waiting for. Perhaps Lydia did not die in vain.”
No, she died in pain, Eliza wanted to say.
“I will see to the preparations,” she said instead. She did not believe in the nonsense the others did, but she wanted to venture into the Black Sector for her own reasons -- namely, Lynch. The need burned in her, and she found herself agitated and nauseous. The thought of harm coming to him, harm that she herself could prevent, was like a knife twisting her gut.
Some of Commander Higgins’s zeal left his face, replaced by a calm, efficient demeanor, signaling that now was the time for business, and that she must take this seriously. “No, my dear,” he said. “There is more news, and I need you to take care if it.”
Fine, she thought, as long as it involves gathering Doctor Jung and going to find Lynch!
“Word has come from our agents in the south. The shipment arrives tonight.”
A cold wave washed over her. Now was the worst possible time. The need to save Lynch still burned in her, but the greater need to save the country took precedent. She had to warn the Queen.
“I’m sending you to stop the train,” Higgins said, his eyes hard, his tone gruff. Everything about him suggested seriousness and importance, and she did not have to wonder why. “We already have our bombers on alert. Once the train is destroyed, Gaston will be helpless.”
“Delightful!” Lars said. “Let me be the one to do it, Commander.”
Eliza tried not to nod, but she knew Lars’s solution was the only way to give her time to send off a message, time to warn Queen Fontaine.
Higgins grunted. “No. I need your expertise below. We must prepare. If the findings are as important as I think they are . . . well, I have already sent off a burst to Lord Wilhelm.”
“Dear God!” Lars said.
“Indeed. He’s on his way. Besides, Elizabeth is our best pilot. She’s been in the skies while we’ve been developing the Ascendance.”
Eliza kept her face still. “It would be my honor.”
Higgins fixed her in his gaze. “Everything rests on you, my dear. Go now. Organize the strike. Hit them hard and hit them fast, and by this time tomorrow the Third Reich -- well, best not to get ahead of ourselves. Only, then . . . the Ascendance . . .”
Chapter 9
Lynch fled through the darkness, heart leaping like a rabid dog against the cage of his ribs. Sweat flew from his hair. Blood trickled down his arm. Behind him he heard the swift scrape and shuffle of footsteps. Something growled. He heard the intake of breath, the crouch and flex of feet, then --
Whipping air.
The creature descended on him. As he had heard the creak of its coiling bones, he had been preparing his own body to swivel, his arm to raise, his finger to contract --
The gun roared in the narrow tunnel. By its flash Lynch saw the heavy skull of the creature fracture under the smash of the bullet and for the thing to reel backward, brain matter spattering the wall.
Even as the bullet felled it, another shape surged right behind it, its eyes glimmering by the light of the muzzle flash.
The light faded, plunging Lynch into darkness once more. He aimed for the second creature, adjusted his aim for its movement, gritted his teeth, held his breath just as his drill instructors had taught him to long ago, and squeezed the trigger.
Click.
The hammer fell on an empty chamber. He squeezed again. Nothing.
The creature lunged, he could feel the air, hear the strain of bones and flesh, and even smell the thing’s approach -- it stank of old blood, rotted flesh, unwashed clothing and unwashed bodies: the stink of a predator mixed with the stink of a homeless person.
Lynch clubbed it with his gun. The blow slammed the creature into the wall. Using the sounds to guide him, he slashed his hook at it, but it had already recoiled and his hook struck the stone wall, sending a shudder up his arm. He flung the empty pistol at where he judged the creature to be, reached for his third and final gun -- he thought it still had some bullets in it -- and fled.
Darkness surrounded him. He had been running in darkness since he’d first entered this honeycomb and had learned from painful trial and error -- scrapes on his elbows, shins and scalp -- to always move in the direction of the furthest echoes. Echoes meant sound waves traveling through air, and air meant an absence of very hard stone and the nearly as hard timber used for shoring up the passageways. He shuffle-ran, his hook before him. Frequently it clattered off stone, sending a shiver up his arm, and he corrected course.
By the brief light of the muzzle flash, Lynch had seen it. Like the others, it appeared human-like but disproportionate, mutated. One of its arms was small, frail and twisted across its chest, while the other was huge, thick, and over-long, so heavy it forced the creature to walk stooped, and it had bent the spine so that the creature moved hunched over. Bulges of bone jutted from its arms, head, neck, and the rest of its body, as if its bone growth had been accelerated and left unchecked. Saliva trickled from its wasted lips, and its skin had shown the same ravaged condition as the one Lynch had seen in the cage. It was a wretched, pain-filled being, and though Lynch wanted to feel pity for it at the moment he desired only to spread its brains out the back of its over-thick, lumpy skull.
He felt the new gun as he ran. A revolver. Good. He probed the cylinders to the left with his thumb, the right with his ring finger. To his growing unease, he found slot after slot empty.
Finally, near the bottom of the right side, he located an unfired bullet and cycled it so that it lay under the hammer, ready to be ejected into the creature’s brain at a moment’s notice.
Lynch hesitated to fire the last bullet. Other creatures prowled these halls. He had lost them in the tunnels after the initial fight, in which he had expended the entire clip of his first pistol, but they might well find him again.
He ran, following the sound of the furthest echoes.
There proved to be one flaw in this strategy, which he found out when he slammed up against something solid. He first hit his head and chest, and the rest followed. His protruding left arm stuck between what felt like two cold metal bars. He drew back, twisted and turned, freed his hook --
The creature fell on him.
There was nowhere to run. Lynch lifted his gun and swung his hook at the same time.
His hook caught the creature on the temple. Rebounded.
